Thursday, March 5, 2015

Oregon Starting New Grant Fund for Small Businesses Developing New Products

The Oregon Economic Development Agency is sweetening the pot in order to encourage small businesses and research universities to develop new products and bring new ideas to market. The new grant program is called Business Oregon, and it is adding $400,000 in state grants to help small businesses who focus on research and development of innovative new products.Business Oregon

The new state grant program will leverage two federal grant programs, the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer grants. As Oregon Governor Kate Brown explained the purpose of the program, “Leveraging state grant funds to access federal funds fosters innovation that not only brings great ideas to life, it creates more opportunities to grow Oregon business statewide.”

How grants help add jobs

Oregon has been a leader in grants for small businesses, and it has resulted in the growth of Fortune 500 companies Qualcomm and Symantec, and iRobot that has been named by Forbes as one of America's Best Small Companies. Their plan is to do even more to help small businesses and reward them for innovative research that creates new products.